We may not have control, but we do have choices about what to believe

"When you are going through your life, it's all anarchy and chaos, random and unrelated events crashing into each other. But when you look back on your life, it comes together like a finely crafted novel."

Joe Walsh, at age 67, perhaps has earned the right to say the words above. Walsh, a mainstay of the legendary band The Eagles, has attained full Social Security retirement age.

That gives Walsh a kind of gravitas.

He's led a wild life, full of dissolute living, and in the process created music that still resonates with people today: "Hotel California," "Take It to the Limit," "Desperado" and "Take It Easy."

Walsh's sentiment is echoed in a song by the Christian rock band Casting Crowns: "One day I'll stand before you, and look back on the life I've lived. I can't wait to enjoy the view, and see how all the pieces fit." (Song: "Already There.")

We live our lives in real time, moment by moment and day by day.

Seeing how the pieces fit -- as the lyrics declare -- is an epiphany usually denied to us on this side of the mortal coil, which is why so many choose to posit faith in a timeless and eternal God.

Anarchy, chaos, random and unrelated events crashing into each other, to use Walsh's metaphor, happen to people all the time.

They cannot be stopped or avoided. We have no control.

But when they do occur, we have choices.

I watched a video in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, the other day featuring a woman who made a choice when the waves of randomness and chaos crashed into her family's lives.

The woman's young daughter had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage while driving her car one afternoon -- a catastrophic event similar to the fatal brain injury suffered by President Franklin Roosevelt back in 1945.

The girl was rendered immediately unconscious and the car she was driving caused a violent multivehicle accident.

Never regaining consciousness, the girl fell into a deep coma and in a matter of days was brain dead.

While this medical tsunami was slamming into her family's fragile shore of grief, the girl's mother stepped out of intensive care into the hospital's ambulance bay.

"It was a bright, sunny day," she said. "I heard a whisper, faint but unmistakable. I heard it once, and then heard it again. A voice said to me: 'I am good.'"

The choice made that terrible day, as that woman stood numb beside the ambulance, was to believe God was reaching out in her grief.

She chose, eschewing the empirical evidence others might require, to trust that God spoke in that moment.

Believing God stood beside her in her grief was a choice to trust, to step beyond what others consider real and provable.

Old Job made a choice when he lost everything, even his good health.

To wit: "I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God." (Job 19:25-26)

I am good. Three words encapsulate one woman's testimony of faith in the midst of anarchy, chaos and randomness.

If we, too, are willing to make the choice to trust, we may find that God is still speaking.